by K. E. Mills
Nodding, Gerald shoved his ghastly souvenir back inside his patchily stained tweed coat. “Yes. I don’t want a portal record of anything going directly to Nettleworth.”
“No,” said Bibbie. Then she shivered. “Blood magic. Gerald, whoever’s behind this … they really mean trouble, don’t they?”
He gave her a look. “Did you think the threat would turn out to be a prank?”
“I hoped it might. Because now it means other people really could get hurt.”
“People like you and Melissande,” he said, frowning. “Hell. I wish you hadn’t come.”
As Bibbie took a breath, ready to argue, Melissande put a warning hand on her arm. “But we did, Gerald, so that’s that. Look—” She cleared her throat. “Are you all right? I don’t mean to fuss, but you’ve gone rather green about the gills.”
Gerald dragged a hand over his disordered hair. “I’m fine. Tracking Bestwick took it out of me, that’s all. That blood magic, it’s filthy. Five minutes to catch my breath and I’ll be right as rain.”
Frowning at him, she wasn’t so sure of that, but this wasn’t the time to argue. “Yes, well, I’m afraid five minutes is all you’ve got. So you’d best hurry back to your own room. It’s almost time to go downstairs, and you can’t escort Bibbie to the Servant’s Ball looking like a goat-herder.”
With a tired smile, Gerald clicked his heels. “Yes, Your Highness. Your wish is my command.”
“I don’t like this, Mel,” said Bibbie, as the door closed behind him. “He’s not telling us everything. I can feel it.”
“Probably he isn’t,” she agreed, “but whatever you do, Bibbie, you mustn’t nag. Right now Gerald’s not our friend, he’s Sir Alec’s secret agent, and he can’t afford to be distracted.”
Distressed, Bibbie was shaking her head. “But—”
“No, Bibbie. No buts,” she said, in her best royal highness voice. “Now come along. It’s time to get dressed.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The house on Chatterly Crescent felt horribly empty without Bibbie, Melissande and Gerald for company. To Monk, it didn’t matter that Melissande didn’t actually live there. The point was, she’d long since fallen into the pleasant habit of dropping by three or four times a week, so it felt like she lived there, and now there was a great big Melissande-shaped hole beneath the old mansion’s roof.
“Blimey,” said Reg, perched on the back of a kitchen chair. “It’s a bit bloody quiet around here, isn’t it?”
Half-heartedly smiling, he looked up from the range, where he was trying not to fry eggs and bacon into lumps of greasy charcoal.
“You’re reading my mind, Reg.”
The bird rattled her tail feathers, then balanced on one foot so she could scratch the side of her head. “And there was me thinking I could do without all the domestic drama.” She sniffed. “Fancy being wrong at my time of life. It’s enough to bring on a case of the dropsicals.”
“I didn’t think birds could contract the dropsicals.”
“Ha! Rumours of my aviosity have been greatly exaggerated.” A moment’s brooding silence, then Reg shuffled a bit. “That manky Sir Alec of yours. He’ll tell us if Splotze goes pear-shaped, will he?”
Wonderful. Trust Reg to stick her beak right into his imagination’s sore spot. Moodily, Monk poked at his crisping bacon. “Of course.”
“Because I wouldn’t put it past that bugger to keep his trap shut. His kind swallow secrets the way toddlers guzzle gumdrops.”
“You’re wrong, Reg,” he insisted, then prodded his frying eggs so hard he breached their wobbling yellow yolks. Damn. “But he won’t have to. Splotze won’t go pear-shaped. Not with Gerald on the job. And the girls.”
“’Course not,” said Reg, being valiant. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”
Except she did, and so did he. Feeling cross and put upon, he fetched a plate and tipped his messy bacon and eggs onto it. Then he fetched Reg’s minced beef from the larder ice box and placed both suppers on the comfortably scarred kitchen table, which was supposed to have three more places set at it—and didn’t.
“Brandy?” said Reg hopefully, hopping down from the chair.
Monk thought about it, tempted, then shook his head. “Not with bacon and eggs. Or raw mince, for that matter. Besides …” He slid into his own chair and picked up his knife and fork. “Between you and me and the wine cellar, I think we’ve all of us been imbibing a bit too freely of late.”
“Ha!” said Reg, with an indignant ruffling of feathers. “Speak for yourself!”
“Look, Reg,” he said, sighing. “I know you’re feeling frazzled. I am, too. But brandy won’t help. We just need to be patient.”
“If I’m frazzled,” Reg said, glaring at her minced beef, “you can blame that manky Sir Alec. He should’ve let me go with them.”
With an effort Melissande would’ve admired, Monk restrained himself from throwing the salt cellar at the damned bird.
“As I’ve already agreed, more than once, probably he should’ve, yes. But he didn’t, Reg, which is typical and let’s face it, not surprising. So let’s leave the poor dead horse alone, shall we?”
Reg’s feathers fluffed again “I bet he’d have let the other Reg go with them.”
Oh. Well. Really damn. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t reach that conclusion. Because while he couldn’t say for certain, what with Sir Alec being a right unchancy bastard and not inclined to share his inner thoughts, he also knew first-hand that the man was unpredictable. Sending Bibbie to Splotze? He hadn’t seen that one coming. So yes … it was entirely possible he’d have sent the other Reg along as part of Gerald’s unlikely team. But it wouldn’t help to tell this Reg as much.
All of a sudden it was very important that he concentrate on cutting his bacon strips into handy bite-sized pieces.
“Well?” Reg said, belligerent. “Don’t just sit there massacring those charred bits of dead pig. Answer me! He would’ve, wouldn’t he?”
Lord, if only Melissande was here. She knew exactly what to say when the bird started one of her rants.
And to think I was going to work late and changed my mind. Why didn’t I work late? I’d rather face Dalrymple than the bird’s inquisition, any day.
He sighed. “Reg …”
“Yes, he bloody well would’ve,” said Reg, determined not only to beat the dead horse but to bounce up and down on its corpse for good measure. “And what’s more, even if he’d tried to keep her out of it, I’ll bet that other Reg wouldn’t have let him, would she? She’d never have taken no for an answer. Come on, Mister Markham. It’s an easy question. In fact, I’ve already answered it. Doing all the work here, I am. That other Reg—”
“Is dead,” he said quietly, and tried to ignore the ache in his throat. “So it doesn’t matter what she would or wouldn’t have done, or what Sir Alec might or might not have allowed, does it? She’s dead and you’re not. Now if you don’t mind, Reg, I’d like to finish my supper. Cold fried egg gives me wind.”
“Sorry,” said Reg, after a short, subdued silence. “I don’t mean to upset you. I know I’m not—I know I can’t—well. Sorry.”
And that was the most alarming thing of all, hearing her small and pained and uncertain. Saying sorry in that tiny voice, and meaning it. Reg. It brought back the dreadful memory of her dead twin, stuffed in that horrible cage, the other Gerald’s helpless prisoner.
“No, Reg, I’m sorry,” he said, letting his knife and fork drop. “There’s no point pretending this situation isn’t bloody awkward, because it is, but I don’t want you feeling like you have to apologise because you’re alive. I never want to hear you apologise for that.” He let out a sharp breath, feeling a tremble in his gut. “It’s not your fault she’s dead.”
Head tipped to one side, Reg regarded him with a disconcertingly knowing gaze. “No. And it’s not yours that he’s dead. That other Monk.”
The tremble in his gut tightened into a pain. “Yeah, okay, look
—”
“No, Mister Markham, you look,” said Reg, with a sharp rattle of her tail. “I might not be her, but that doesn’t make me blind or stupid. You need to stop breaking your heart over what happened, sunshine, because there was no saving him. That other Monk. Believe you me, his Gerald was always going to kill him sooner or later. It’s just your bad luck he ended up dying here.”
The memory of the other Monk’s cruel death, still raw, still too near, closed his aching throat.
“So what say we start over,” said Reg, her careful gaze not shifting from his face. “No more wallowing in yesterday. No more flogging corpsed horses. They’re dead, we’re not, and life carries on.”
It sounded horribly heartless, put baldly like that. But she was right. Short of creating a thaumaturgically transduced temporal slipshift, recent events could not be undone.
And while that might be doable, maybe, not even I’m mad enough to give it a go.
“Agreed,” he sighed. “We’ll start over, starting now. Only …” He impaled a piece of crispy bacon on the end of his fork. “I’m not so sure about Gerald. If he can put it all behind him, I mean. That leftover grimoire magic? I’m telling you, Reg, he’s so scared of the filthy stuff he can hardly see straight. He’s scared of himself. And I’m worried he’ll—”
She chattered her beak. “Just you leave that boy to me. Because here’s what I know, if I don’t know anything else: whichever Reg I am, sunshine, first and foremost he’s my Gerald. And I’ll bloody well set myself on fire before I let him go the way of that other one.”
Whatever she’d been once, human, a witch queen, with possibly dubious powers, she was a frail, vulnerable bird now. More vulnerable than ever, given her ordeals in that other world. Even so, Monk felt bolstered by her stark declaration. More and more he was coming to believe that in her heart, where it counted, despite all the differences, she was still Reg.
He nodded. “Good. But when he gets back from Splotze, I think you and I need to—”
They both turned their heads at the sound of the front door bell, deeply chiming.
“Bugger,” said Reg. “Expecting visitors, are you?”
As he pushed back his chair, the door bell chimed again. “No. You?”
“Ha,” she snorted. “Very funny. Now go see who that is before they break the bloody bell.”
He opened the front door to find his brother scowling on the welcome mat. “It’s about time. What are you, Monk? Deaf?”
“Aylesbury,” he said stupidly. “Was I expecting you?”
With a roll of his eyes, Aylesbury shoved past him into the shabby foyer. “How should I know what you’re expecting? You can’t even answer your own front door in a timely manner.”
Bugger. It was turning into one of those kind of nights. Resigned to aggravation, Monk closed the door and trailed after his brother, who was acquainted enough with Great-uncle Throgmorton’s old house that he didn’t need to ask directions to the parlour.
“Do help yourself to a drink, Aylesbury,” he said, entering the large, comfortably untidy room.
His brother was already pouring a generous measure of brandy into a glass. A swift quirk of one eyebrow was his only response to the sarcasm. Without asking if he could pour his host a drink, too, he downed the brandy, sploshed another generous measure into the glass, then turned.
“So. Lanruvia. Seems I was a trifle … behind the times. Apparently they’re dipping their toes into murky waters again.”
Oh, lord. Monk crossed to the drinks trolley, poured himself three fat fingers of fermented peach and swallowed all of them in one go.
“What kind of murky waters?” he said hoarsely, as the brandy ignited a trail of fire down his throat and into his almost empty belly.
Aylesbury began an aimless wandering of the parlour. “I was pretty bloody peeved, you know, when Throgmorton handed you this place,” he said, his gaze roaming the faded wallpaper and the tatty carpet and the wide, curtain-covered windows. “He knew I wanted it. That’s why you got it, of course.”
Monk said the only thing he could think of. “Sorry.”
“Of course you are.” Aylesbury sipped more brandy, then smiled one of his small, sardonic smiles. “Bet the old codger’s spinning in the family sepulchre as we speak, knowing our dear little sister’s taken up residence. Assuming he does know.” Another smile. “We can but hope.”
Monk considered his brother. Aylesbury in his day-to-day work clothes was always more approachable than the brother who aped a lost age in velvets and neck ruff. And he had driven all the way out here with news of Lanruvia. That counted for something, surely. Meant there was maybe some hope for them to be more than impolite strangers. So perhaps, just this once, they might find common ground.
“Aylesbury … why aren’t we friends?”
Aylesbury choked on his brandy, then laughed. “Because you’re a pillock.”
Or possibly not. “I don’t mean to be.”
“And snakes don’t mean to be poisonous, but they’ll still kill you.”
“You think I’m a snake?”
“I think you’re a spoiled brat, Monk,” Aylesbury said, shrugging. “I think you’re so used to being fawned over as a genius you can’t imagine being wrong or not entitled to adoration. Everything you want, you get. You always have. You always will. You break the rules, you’re winked at. You ignore the rules, you’re winked at. You make up your own rules, you’re winked at. Your path’s strewn with roses and the rest of us walk in shit.” Another shrug. “That’s what I think.”
Monk blinked. His brother’s indifferent dislike hurt, far more than he expected. Or wanted. “And yet you came to tell me about Lanruvia.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Hitching his hip against the back of the old sofa, Aylesbury gestured vaguely. “You asked. Besides, I like those Lanruvian bastards even less than I like you.”
He put down his empty brandy glass. “You still haven’t told me what kind of murky waters they’re splashing about in.”
“That’s because I don’t know,” said Aylesbury. “Not exactly. Nobody likes to talk about Lanruvia, Monk. The folk who have regular dealings with them know what happens to gossips.”
“But you’ve heard something, you must have,” he insisted. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’ve heard two things,” Aylesbury admitted, after a teasing pause. “The first is that we had an enquiry about locating and shipping a thaumicle extractor to Maneez.”
“Well …” Monk frowned. “Extractors are restricted, sure, but Maneez is on the approved list of purchasers.”
“Maneez is, but Lanruvia isn’t. And at the Trade Fair in Budolph week before last, I saw with my own eyes the Maneezi and Lanruvian delegates being very friendly.”
“And that’s unusual, is it?”
Aylesbury snorted. “No, Monk, I’m mentioning it because them hobnobbing in corners happens every bloody day of the week.”
“Right. Sorry.” He chewed at his lip. “And what was the other thing?”
“They got an invite to the Splotze-Borovnik wedding.”
Distracted by the unsettling notion of the Lanruvians mucking about with thaumicle extractions, he nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“You know?” Lips tightening, Aylesbury stared into his unfinished brandy. Then he finished it and slapped the emptied glass onto the nearest table. “I see. Doubtless Uncle Ralph, or one of his government cronies, mentioned it to you in passing. As they do. All the time. Must be nice, not to mention warm, hugging all those terribly important secrets to your skinny chest.”
Damn. Monk took a step towards him. “Aylesbury, I’m sorry. I’d tell you what’s going on if I could, but—”
Up came his brother’s hands, in mock-entreaty. “No, no, that’s quite all right. Wouldn’t want Ottosland compromised, would we? Wouldn’t want you compromised. Not you, the great and mysterious Monk Markham. No—don’t bother. I can see myself out.”
“He’s a bit of a plonker, your brother, isn’t he?”
“You were eavesdropping?”
Reg’s dark eyes gleamed. “I was holding myself in readiness in case fisticuffs broke out.”
“Thank you. I think.”
“You’re welcome. Well? Was him dropping by worth letting your dinner get cold?”
Groaning, Monk collapsed into the nearest armchair. “I’ve no idea. But I’ll pass on what he said. Perhaps Sir Alec can make sense of it.”
“And speaking of that Department stooge,” said Reg, her feathers fluffing with disdain, “he’s left a message for you in your crystal ball. The one in the kitchen. Didn’t sound particularly urgent but then you never can tell with that cagey bugger, can you?”
To hell with dignity. He ran out of the room, Reg flapping behind him.
The message was short and sweet. “Contact me via this vibration.” Because dealing with Sir Alec required razor sharp reflexes, and there was too much brandy sloshing about in his belly, he ate what remained of his cold bacon—it looked like Reg had helped herself while his back was turned, drat her—then activated his crystal ball.
“Ah. Mister Markham,” Sir Alec greeted him, looking washed out and weary but no more worried than usual, which was a relief. “Good. You’re free to talk?”
“Yes, sir. Sir, is everything all right?”
“Not really,” said Sir Alec, very dry. “Mister Dunwoody reports that Abel Bestwick appears to have met with some thaumaturgical foul play. Which means, Mister Markham, I need you to brush up on blood magic hexes. I should shortly have a sample for you to unravel.”
Blood magic? Monk swallowed bile. Hell, what was Gerald mixed up in this time? And Bibbie … and Melissande …
And if Sir Alec can give me a heads up about blood hexes and not be looking more worried than usual, what does that say about a typical day in his Department?
